Filmmaker Matt Wolf Takes on the Fascinating Life of Bayard Rustin in His New Documentary

Matt Wolf has a type. The filmmaker’s subjects tend to be people who’ve made important contributions to the world—like Eloise creator Hilary Knight in It's Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise, or the influential musician and producer Arthur Russell in Wild Combination—but whose own lives are relatively unknown. His new documentary short, Bayard & Me, premiering May 15, takes that same kind of gimlet-eyed deep dive into the life of Bayard Rustin, the civil-rights icon who organized the 1963 March on Washington and who, in 2013, was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work.

In Wolf’s film, however, the focus isn’t on Rustin’s activism alone, but how it intertwined with his personal live. Namely, how he came to adopt his boyfriend, Walter Naegle, in an effort to work around a system that—prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage—made the legality of their partnership difficult to define. Here, Wolf opens up about his process for our peek inside the habits of a creative mastermind.

How do you prepare yourself to be creative—what’s your ritual?

For me it’s all about research and following my curiosity. I read a lot of long-form journalism online, see a lot of movies and art, and I read a lot of books. Music is also a big part of how I think and let my mind wander.

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What place is most conducive in which for you to work?

I have a little office cave in the basement of an apartment building in the West Village. That’s where I get a lot of my work done. But I also get a lot [from] walking around the city and listening to music.

Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.

Monroe Frederick, Courtesy Estate of Bayard Rustin

What one element is absolutely necessary for your process?

Talking to other people. Especially producers, who are typically considered business partners, but in reality are the creative siblings of directors. I’ve been working with Kyle Martin since the beginning and Stacey Reiss for many years, and I’ve got a bunch of other producer siblings out there.

At what time of day do you prefer to work?

For no particular reason I keep a corporate schedule—9 to 6. I am religious about not working on the weekends unless I absolutely have to. I guess it’s helpful for me to remember that my creative work is my job so that I have some boundaries between life and work.

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What’s your go-to snack?

Whatever chocolate I can get my grubby little hands on.

How do you take your coffee?

With almond milk

Who’s your favorite collaborator?

Editors. I like to binge edit sometimes, going more than 12 hours with an editor. You get a little delirious, but you also get into each other’s heads in a way that goes beyond talking. I love to collaboratively figuring out how to make something work that isn’t working.

What do you most often do to procrastinate?

Email. I like to get to “Inbox Zero” because I’m crazy like that. I respond within a few minutes to emails because for me it’s like hot potato. Get that stuff out of my inbox!

Courtesy

What’s your best trick for overcoming a block?

Doing “morning pages.” There’s this artist self-help book, The Artist’s Way, that kind of weirds me out, but some aspects of it are very helpful. For morning pages, you write three pages longhand without stopping first thing in the morning. You never look back and read what you’ve written, but it kind of cuts out the self-doubt from your brain. It helps you to think creatively without judging yourself.

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It’s said that genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. What isthat ratio like for you?

I see creativity as 99% problem solving. I definitely find an idea that sets me off, and I start running fast and hard with it. But once a project is actually happening it’s just a bunch of problems that need to be solved. I like coming up with the process to solve those problems, which I think relates more to experience than “genius.”

What’s your dream project?

All the films I’m working on right now.

What have you learned from a failure?

To try to let go of expectations for my work and to stop comparing myself to other people.

What’s your favorite creation thus far?

They’re all my babies. But I like my first film Wild Combination because I made it with such naiveté, and I think there’s something pure about it. In a lot of ways, it represents what I have to say in the world and how I can say it.

What do you hope your creative legacy will be?

A bunch of films that don’t necessarily seem related until you put them together in one context.

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